Hospitals, and elderly care facilities, and the like, have residents or patients that occupy rooms. It can be dangerous for these people to get out of bed when the room is dark. However, often they wish to have the room dark in order to sleep. Also, if the inhabitant of the room were to fall they may not be able to get back up, and may have no way of communicating their situation to someone who can help them.
It is therefore desirable to have some means for automatically illuminating the room when an occupant gets out of bed. It is additionally desirable to provide a notification to a caretaker that the occupant has gotten out of bed, so that the caretaker can check to see if the occupant needs any help, and to verify that the occupant was able to safely return to bed. The system should preferably encourage the caretakers to respond to such notifications and verify that the caretaker has responded.
The present invention meets these needs.